About this blog..

This is a blog that I started in April 2006, just after I first put on my bogu (kendo armour). It collects the advices given by more experienced kendo practitioners as well as those from my own experiences. Both technical and the mental aspects of kendo are written in the blog. I hope someone will find them useful or interesting at least!

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Teaching the body

It's definitely not a good idea to eat doener kebab (a type of Turkish fast food, common in Germany) before the training. My body felt so heavy through out the training this evening.

In the previous couple of months, I had been working on seme, and, before then, strong-men cuts. I improved in each category separately, but it's still somehow unnatural to combine to both together, which is something I will have to work on. Especially, for kote-men, my men cut tends to be a bit too weak.

Tenouchi is the word here. At least at the moment my left forearm feels sore -- a good sign!

Today a few beginners wore the bogu for the first time. One of them (I'll insert the name later) had very nice posture, by that I mean back-straight, which something, for a lot of people, difficult to do (including me at the beginning). Another debutante, Mathies, who lately has been showing good fighting spirits consistently, did very well again on keeping the spirit up, even though it was obvious that he was at his physical limit. I hope he keeps it up!

Goals for the month:

Making the following things my natural instinct:

- seme;

- fast foot work;

- small sharp cut with left hand (wrist and fingers);

- push the hip forwards;

- and quickly draw up the left foot.

I hope to really rub these things deep into my joints, muscles and tendons.

The past weeks I often went for a 45 mins jog on Sunday, first along the river Elbe and then up the hill to complete a cycle back to my flat. It's amazing how significantly my stamina has improved since a year ago, by just doing kendo. Back then I could only jog continuously for half-an-hour.